A perfect match in every way

A perfect match in every way

Jordan Youd, left, donated a kidney to his wife Matti. Their friends made these t-shirts for them.Photo by
Arlen Redekop

When Jordan Youd met his future wife, Matti, in 2002, he knew he’d found his perfect match.

The pair met just weeks into their first term at Trinity Western University. He offered her a ride home from a bowling event and they clicked.

“I told my folks that I was done,” the 29-year-old recalled while lying in a bed at St. Paul’s awaiting surgery. “I had found the girl I was going to marry.”

He couldn’t know then he’d be a perfect match for his wife in other ways: 10 years later, he would be tested as a compatible organ donor and undergo surgery to donate a kidney to save her life.

After their marriage in 2006, Matti was healthy and active, training for a half-marathon while teaching autistic children. Then everything changed.

“I remember stepping on a scale one morning and realizing I was 15 pounds heavier. I was like ‘whoa, we are eating salad for a week,’” Matti recalled, sitting in a waiting room at St. Paul’s as her husband prepped for surgery.

“I started getting really bad headaches and noticed I could make dents in my legs. I thought ‘OK, something is really weird.”’

Something was very wrong. Her kidneys were shutting down, due to an auto-immune disorder called focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, which scars kidney filters.

She declined rapidly, hit with fatigue, nausea and insomnia. Her tissues swelled with 60 pounds of water. Some mornings, she couldn’t open her eyelids. Getting up after sitting was agony.

“It hurt so bad, it was brutal,” she recalled. “I could barely walk.”

“We joked she started to look like the Michelin Man,” Jordan said.

But her condition was far from funny. For a few years, while they lived in Toronto, Matti’s kidney function held at 30 per cent with medication and restricting salt intake to under 500 mg a day.

“It’s one thing to say don’t eat salt, but to not actually eat salt for five years, I mean, there is salt in everything. There is salt in milk,” Matti said of her restrictive diet.

Despite her efforts, the disease progressed and by the time they returned to B.C. and Matti’s care was transferred to St. Paul’s in 2012, her kidney function dropped into the teens.

St. Paul’s nephrologist Dr. Monica Beaulieu suggested a transplant. The news came as a relief.

“A transplant represents an end to this whole thing,” Jordan said.

He had no doubt he would offer to donate. “I have two kidneys, she needs one.”

His wife sees his gift differently.

“Jordan is giving me a kidney and that is incredible,” Matti said, tears welling in her eyes, “but for me the biggest gift was how he treated me the entire five years I was sick.”

Now, she said, “I just look forward to living life again. This is my second chance.”

She’s grateful to St. Paul’s for that chance.

“The team at St. Paul’s has been fantastic. My nurse and doctors have made me feel I am more than just a name on a chart. When they said ‘we need to get you started for a transplant,’ those words were such a relief ... all of a sudden there was an end in sight ... the struggle was going to be over one day, and that day is today.”

• • •

Across Canada, many patients with kidney disease are waiting for their own second chance.

Nearly 40,000 people are being treated for kidney failure and more than 4,000 are waiting for an organ transplant — 80 per cent for a kidney. But the average wait time in Canada is three-and-a-half years.

In B.C., some 14,000 people have been diagnosed with the disease, and 400 are on donor wait-lists. They will wait, on average, over five years.

More than 4,700 transplants have been performed in B.C. since the first operation in 1968 at Vancouver General Hospital. St. Paul’s had its first in 1986.

Increasingly, living donors are behind those stats, said St. Paul’s urologist and kidney transplant surgeon Dr. Bill Gourlay.

“We probably have per capita the most living donors [in B.C.],” said Dr. Gourlay, who has done a thousand kidney transplants since joining the hospital in 1997.

One factor spurring living donations is that “B.C. has been one of the worst provinces for deceased donors, and we’ve had one of the longest wait times.”

But living donation offers hope. Last year at St. Paul’s, for instance, 60 per cent of its record-setting 101 kidney transplants involved a living donor.

• • •

By 9 a.m., Matti’s living donor is under anesthetic in O.R. No. 4 and St. Paul’s urologist and kidney transplant surgeon Dr. Michael Eng and resident Dr. Michelle Longpre make the first incision.

The surgeons create small cuts using laparoscopic cameras and ultrasonic surgical tools to delicately free his left kidney from surrounding tissues.

As they work, Jordan’s abdominal cavity is projected onto three screens.

The doctors work fast.

By 9:15 a.m. the kidney is exposed and they separate the adrenal gland, then isolate the vein, artery and the ureter connecting it to the bladder.

By 10 a.m. the surgeons start a low abdominal incision through which to remove the kidney.

A nurse from BC Transplant stands by with a red organ transplant bag that looks like a lunch cooler, but is labelled: Human organ for transplant. Handle with care. Keep cool. Do not freeze.

Time is of the essence now — to preserve the organ, transplants are swift. They clamp and cut the vessels and Dr. Eng pulls out the organ at 10:36 a.m. He places it in a tray, and he and the nurse flush the pale pink fist-sized organ — so small, but so important.

“It’s completely selfless, to undergo the risk of surgery for someone else,” Dr. Eng muses as surgery winds down. “It’s one of the most stressful surgeries, because you’re operating on a healthy person.”

But it’s gone well. Dr. Gourlay and a resident move in to prepare the organ, slicing away excess tissue with scalpels and tweezers.

Just after 11 a.m. Jordan’s kidney is dropped into a plastic tub, packed in ice and locked in a transplant bag until Matti’s surgery.

It doesn’t stay on ice long.

By 12:45 p.m., Matti is sedated in O.R. No. 5 and Dr. Longpre, under Dr. Gourlay’s supervision, makes a seven-inch cut on her right side.

The surgeons retract the skin and muscle and detach connective tissues. They isolate the artery and vein that supply the right leg so the vessels of the new kidney can be grafted on. The team leave Matti’s failing kidneys in her body, avoiding extra surgery. Soon, she’ll have three.

At 1:30 p.m., they are ready for the organ. “Where’s the bean?” Dr. Gourlay jokes. Nurses place it into a metal pan in an icy bath. After a few minutes of prep, the kidney is lowered into Matti’s body. First, the vein is attached, then the artery — but they are clamped so no blood flows. By 2:13 p.m. they remove the clamps. Blood flows and the kidney pinks.

The surgeons move to attach the ureter, but before they do, a dribble of liquid comes out: urine. Matti’s new kidney has started working in just under three minutes.

“I hurt,” he said, wincing. “It feels like I got run over by a truck.”

But both are hopeful the worst is over and are making plans to enjoy a new start.

They plan to camp in the Olympic Peninsula, walk Spain’s Camino de Santiago, travel, hike and do everything they’ve put on hold.

“Then,” Jordan added with a grin, “we want to eat salt. She hasn’t been able to have salt in five years. She has a list of food.”

First on the list, Matti said, is a stack of pancakes with pulled pork and a side of pork belly.

But before they can celebrate, there is a long process of recovery: two months for him, three for her, packed with tests and clinic visits. Matti will need anti-rejection drugs for the rest of her life. Her condition comes with a high rate of recurrence — there are no guarantees the transplant will last.

Their parents — Jim and Fran Youd from California and Luce and Ron Preston from Ontario — flew in to care for them.

“I think they’ve handled it remarkably well,” Jordan’s mother Fran said, moved by her son’s decision to donate to his wife.

“She just amazes me,” Matti’s mother Luce said of her cheerful perseverance through her illness. “And he is always there for her.”

Two weeks after the transplant, Jordan is up and about but still has a poor appetite and tires easily. Matti had a rejection scare after subpar test results and a rapid 20-pound water weight gain, but she’s back on track, realizing she has to remain strict with salt.

Throughout, the couple have kept spirits up with humour. To mark the surgery, friends gave them funny T-shirts. His says: Ask me about my missing organs.” Hers: “I have male parts.”

Jordan vows not to let his wife forget it. Some people might be wary of a spouse using “I gave you my kidney!” as a retort in future arguments. Not Jordan.

“Oh, no, I’m probably going to do that,” he said, only half in jest. “That’s totally in bounds. Whenever we get in a fight I’m just going to touch the place it was and say, ‘Oh, man.’”

How to become an organ donor

BC Transplant surveys show while 85 per cent of BC residents support organ donation and intend to register, only about 18 per cent have done so, about 847,400 residents.

These organs are at a premium: On average, there are 25,000 deaths in B.C. a year and less than one per cent will die in a way that can permit organ donation.

To register as an organ donor in BC, visit https://transplant.bc.ca/OnlineReg/bcts.asp.

Donor registration cards are also available at motor vehicle licensing branches, doctors’ offices, ICBC and London Drugs locations, and other pharmacies.

Download a form at www.transplant.bc.ca/RegCard06.pdf or contact BC Transplant at www.transplant.bc.ca/organ_form.asp to request one by mail.

Source: The Kidney Foundation of Canada

Donate Status Update

As of September, Canadians can share their status as an organ donor on Facebook.

The social networking service launched a tool to allow users to display their donor status on their timelines (they must still sign up with their provincial organ registry) and share their reasoning with family and friends.

The goal is to spread awareness of the need to register for organ donation. Visit: http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=338196302902319#How-do-I-share-that-I%E2%80%99m-an-organ-donor-on-Facebook?

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